BY Emma Elebeke

THOUGH the boom in internet access has brought much relief to the way people do things, the benefits have been hampered by lack of sufficient information that will enable usage in areas like e-commerce, e-government, among other related activities via the internet.

It was against this backdrop that stakeholders in the nation’s information and technology, IT sector, last week gathered in Abuja to brainstorm on possible ways of domesticating a globally accepted Public Key Infrastructure for Nigeria.

The event organized by the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA was designed for a formal presentation of a draft Public Key Infrastructure blueprint to chart a  new course for the emergence of  a digital economy for the country.

PKI is a collection of security technologies, procedures, processes, and policies that jointly provide a framework for addressing, using cryptography, the fundamental security issues of privacy, authentication, integrity, and access control in data communication.

Presenting the document , Director General of NITDA, Prof. Cleopas Angaye represented by Dr. Akin Fapohunda said with the rate of uncontrolled infiltration and proliferation in the use of cyberspace for communication and transaction, the need to develop a sustainable and  secure platform for cyber accessibility, secured transaction and credible identity cannot be over emphasized.

“Most electronic communications today are neither private nor are they secured unless explicitly protected. Digital media are susceptible to a number of untoward acts-passive and active eavesdropping, substitution, modification and replication. Data whose storage is network based or that is passed from one user to another must be protected from unauthorized or fraudulent access and misdirection, as the effect of this on the organization can be very costly. Network security, is therefore, paramount to every organization that has chosen to enter the digital domain,’’ he added.

In her goodwill message, President of Nigerian Internet Registration Association, NIRA, Mrs. Mary Uduma, said the gathering would further enlarge peoples’ understanding about the need to protect the consumer of internet services mails to an unknown recipient.

‘When information is well protected all through from the sender up to the receiver, the hacker cannot tamper with it and if he does, the receiver will know. The sender and recipient documents must match before the authentication can be ascertained,’’ she said.

National President of Institute of Software Practitioners of Nigeria, ISPON, Mr. Chris Uwaje stated that any country desirous of progress in the emerging knowledge economy, must consider PKI a critical element in actualizing its developmental goals through information and technology. He noted that Nigeria had been striving to adhere to standards but insisted that  such standards must be good enough to compete favourably at the global level, which he said was what the KPI was set to achieve.